THE PARENTS of murdered British landscape architect Joanna Yeates yesterday said they hoped her killer, Vincent Tabak, would suffer a “living hell” in prison for the brutal, sexually motivated attack.
Speaking after Tabak (33) was jailed for a minimum of 20 years, David and Teresa Yeates said they regretted he could not be executed for murdering their daughter.
“The best we can hope for him is that he spends the rest of his life incarcerated, where his life is a living hell, being the recipient of all the evils, deprivations and degradations that his situation can provide,” they said.
Tabak was on suicide watch last night and his ordeal in jail is likely to be made worse by revelations of his interest in hardcore pornography, some of which featured strangulation and bondage.
When police in Bristol in west England inspected his computers following his arrest, they found that Tabak had accessed a portal to a pornographic website on the day he killed Ms Yeates (25). After the murder, the Dutch engineer sometimes flicked between reports about Ms Yeates’s disappearance and pornography.
Police analysts also discovered that Tabak did research on escort agencies during business trips. While in Los Angeles shortly before his attack on Ms Yeates, he may twice have employed a sex worker, once after checking into a hotel under a false name.
During the trial at Bristol crown court, Tabak admitted a lesser offence of manslaughter but denied he was motivated by sex.
He claimed that Ms Yeates, his neighbour in his apartment block, had invited him into her apartment and made a flirtatious remark, encouraging him to try to kiss her. She had screamed and he had tried to “calm” her by putting one hand over her mouth and another over her neck.
But sentencing Tabak, after the jury found him guilty of murder by a majority of 10-2, the judge, Mr Justice Field, made it clear he believed the killing had been a sex crime. He said Tabak himself had said he wanted to kiss Ms Yeates, but he was satisfied the killer “intended to go further” and was only frustrated by her screams.
Surrounded by six security guards, Tabak stood slightly hunched in the dock. The judge told Tabak he had not even known Ms Yeates’s name when he entered her apartment on December 17th last year.
Mr Justice Field said his murderous attack was “a dreadful, evil act against a vulnerable young woman in her own home”. He said Ms Yeates had died in pain, “beset with fear and struggling desperately for her life”.
The judge said he thought Tabak was a “very dangerous” man, as well as being “thoroughly deceitful, dishonest and manipulative”. He had caused “devastating heartache” to Ms Yeates’s family and her boyfriend, Greg Reardon.
After killing Ms Yeates, Tabak put her body in his car boot and dumped it on the verge of a country lane. By doing so, the judge said he had forced Ms Yeates’s loved ones to endure “seven days of agony” before her body was found on Christmas Day. It was a “terribly cruel thing to do”. – (Guardian service)